The Maelstrom
by FirenzeFuomo
Summary: Roy is often impulsive, uninhibited, and harsh. When angered, it's exemplified. Riza is often stubborn, hard, and powerful. When fought with, it's exemplified. Or, what it could be like if the two characters who never fight, did.


"It isn't about the method, Lieutenant, it's about getting it done."

"That is the falsest thing I have ever heard you say."

Her words were staccato and sharp. There were deep lines in her forehead from the way her brow was turned down. He rarely witnessed her in such a way, and maybe somewhere inside it could have been sobering to him, but it wasn't.

His anger was there too.

"Well maybe you haven't been listening hard enough," he bit off, turning his head away from her to look down the alley. The bricks on each side of the walls were wet with the floating drizzle overhead. The streetlamp several meters away bounced off the scattered puddles pooled in the flaws of the concrete.

"Maybe you haven't been listening at all," she said, her volume raising but her voice keeping it's solidity. He scoffed and took a step forward, deciding to completely ignore her, an action he was wholly unfamiliar with but one he was truly desiring, until her hand caught his shoulder like a wrench and she pulled him back. The grip she had was strong and the pull was not gentle, and he felt a prick of fury from the feeling of being yanked. His foot had to catch him as he was forced round. His head whipped down to glare at her, and he was met with an equally dangerous look.

"You're being absolutely _blind_ , Colonel, and I won't let you do this."

" _Let_ me do this _?_ " He lifted a hand to seize hers and he thrust it off of him. Strange: that space didn't feel empty before she grabbed him, but it did now that he pushed her away. "I'm the one calling the shots, since you've seemed to forget, and you're coming incredibly close of being in my way."

He turned away again, hoping that if he could not see her he would not feel her, but her voice was just as snaring as anything.

"Colonel, you're being tasteless and brazen, and the only one standing in your way is y-"

"No!" he shouted, pivoting around again with speed like wind. Her mouth closed in surprise, but she did not flinch. He felt the muscles in his face twitch.

"I'm moving forward," he continued in a voice that was attempting to be controlled. "And I never would have thought to say this, but you are pulling me back in this moment. Why can't you see what I'm trying to do?"

"I see you playing games with a very, very grey line, sir, and that's not who we were ever supposed to be. We were never supposed to be the grey line soldiers, finding balance between rule and result - that's...that's who we're trying to fight against, Colonel! Since day one!"

"Lieutenant, this isn't a grey area! He's a bad guy, it's black and white, can really you deny that?" Something like true exasperation broiled around his torso, hot and sparking. It felt unpredictable. Unsafe.

What was happening, the tumult and distance between them, was entirely uncommon. It was unwelcome and sour. She was his anchor and her absence in support made him feel loose, whipping like a flag strapped onto a pole by only one rope; _why can't you see with my eyes?_

" _Yes of course he is!"_ she raised back. "But you are not!"

"You are confusing the meaning, Hawkeye! Me bringing him to justice is not the same as him mauling lives! I can't even believe your logic on this, goddammit, why are you making this so goddamn complicated?! This can be _quick_ , and it will _benefit us both! Benefit Amestris! Is that so terrible to you?!"_

He was struggling to keep his volume under control.

It was true, he held a reputation in not only Central, but throughout the country; the Flame Alchemist had the temper of a wildfire. Unforgiving and brash.

But never….never with her.

"Colonel!" she pleaded. He saw her eyes searching his own and he hated it. "Tell me that you truly believe what you are trying to do is right!"

" _IT IS."_ The voice that came out of his mouth was a kind of quiet bellow, a snarl held back by a chain. It seemed to faze her, in a way that was only unique to her. The way her eyebrows flinched together when he spoke, the miniscule and minute way her head shook, how her chin moved back an inch in reaction.

"Sir…" She couldn't continue the thought. He supposed she didn't have the words. That the disappointment she felt towards him was muting. It drove him to the brink of rage. A bundle of kindling with a match hovering above.

" _Lieutenant, we're going now. And if you're not coming along, then go home."_

"I won't."

It teetered on the edge, soaking in the heat of his burning temper.

" _You will leave, Lieutenant,"_ he growled icily, annunciating each syllable, his eyes lit, " _that is an order!"_

"I absolutely refuse."

He inhaled rapidly and so the match fell.

" _You are with me,"_ he finally yelled, his booming voice echoing off the damp, dark walls. " _Or you are not! Which is it?!"_

The face he knew to be calm - comforting, even - fell victim to shock, then a fury of its own, and the emotion in her features was suddenly not so subtle.

" _Colonel, stop being so full of yourself and listen to me!"_ She cut off the last part of the sentence sharply, straining her voice as she yelled. A short lock of hair hung loose from her clip, slightly curled and wet from the rain. The tops of her shoulders were dark with it. "If you kill that man, _you become your own enemy!_ "

"Quit rearranging the words to make this story a tragedy, Hawkeye! He doesn't deserve life, you damn well know that, do not try and tell me otherwise!"

"He deserves a fair trial, sir!"

"Where he will be put to death, anyway!"

" _Then let him be sentenced!"_

" _I kill Hudson,"_ he began as he felt the veins in his neck bulge with the pressure of his rage. It had been some time since he last yelled in such volume, and in such primal anger. When had he last been so truly enraged?

She was not listening. She was not understanding. And he desperately, desperately needed her to understand.

But she wasn't going to.

Regardless. It didn't matter. He would do it anyway.

The desperation of it all was converted to pure madness, and this was translated to him in only anger, and he delved further away from the root of their upheaval and inched closer to a civilized sort of mania.

" _I kill Hudson,"_ he continued ferally, " _I get promoted, and we are THIS much closer! Isn't that what we've always wanted?! Isn't it?! You - me - it's what we've planned! Tell me it isn't!"_

" _Tell me what you'd be doing isn't killing for power!"_

It seemed like the night was woven with their shouts, that the walls and the wet ground both sponged up their yells while simultaneously thrusting against them so they reverberated off one another.

"Bullshit!"

She scoffed disdainfully and bit her lip, a fresh wave of rage rippling over her face before she fiercely looked away to stare at the sidewall of the alley, not able to stop shaking her head as she processed her disbelief.

"Goddamnit, Hawkeye, can't you see?!" She shook her head even more and looked up to the black sky, as though it held the answer for her. The drizzle of rain had since turned to a light downpour. "Look at me!" he demanded. " _Look at me!"_

Her eyes then bore into his, intense and dark and so expressive he almost regretted the demand. They felt like ice.

"This alchemist," he implored, "has killed civilians. Innocent people. He's captured them, and he's stripped them of their humanity because he himself has none. _Somebody has to stop him_ , and they asked _me_ to do it."

"They asked you," she reminded lowly, "not ordered, but asked, because otherwise it would be _illegal as a demand,_ for you to _kill him_. _Sir._ "

" _So I will."_

"You'll be compromising who you sought out to be in the first place!" she retaliated, her normally stoic face almost unrecognizable. His chest rose angrily.

" _But he deserves to die! How am I doing wrong?!"_

"Colonel!" He saw her become as desperate as he. "I was inspired to join the ranks of the military by a man who once told me of a future for Amestris that was built with the foundation of fairness and goodness! Is this fair, and is this good, Colonel?!"

" _I,"_ he practically screamed, " _Get! Promoted! And we are that much closer to our goal!_ _ **Our**_ _goal! I'm not just doing this for me!"_

Something flashed in her eyes and she took a few steps forward, touching his shoulder in a way that outlied both of their inflictions. Like when you taste something sweet in a meal cooked with salt, it did not seem to belong.

He could barely stand to look at her anymore. He thought perhaps it was because she was so infuriating, or, he thought, perhaps it was because she was right. He flushed the thought down the storm drain with the rest of the sewage.

"You can still get promoted, Colonel," she said to him quietly, fervently, "but not like this."

He grabbed her hand again and moved to shove it off his shoulder, an attest that he had no interest in her plea, but before he could release it she wrenched out of his grip on her own. The gentleness in her features disappeared into the night and was replaced with a hardness unlike her.

" _Stop grabbing me._ "

In response, blinded by their shouts, blinded by his own mind and by her dangerous glare, not thinking because he was filled with hotness and a brutal anger, he launched his hand out and caught her wrist like a trapper, so quick he surprised even himself, and he tugged her forward without so much of a whisper of gentleness. He didn't know if it was the rain, or the night, or maybe, if he was lucky, a nearby cat, but he thought he heard a quiet inhale of alarm when he did so.

He ignored it as he continued snarling in a quiet and lethal way.

"Stop making me empty promises, soldier, because guess where we are?"

She said nothing, but something unrecognizable, though zealous nonetheless, lined her features. She was so close to him now that he couldn't understand why she was still so difficult to read. Short, quick breaths pumped out from her nostrils. He could feel her pulse beneath his fingertips. It was heavy and powerful and enraged. Or maybe that was his own.

"We're in hell," he continued threateningly. His heart was ripping out of his chest. "I think we have been for some time. And I don't see you following me."

She was tough, strong, and the arm in his hand pulled impressively as she attempted to wring out of his grasp, but he was tougher and he was stronger and he only tightened his grip on her. He pulled her even closer in the struggle between them, her pulling him towards her and him retaliating forcefully so she tripped forward, and his voice dropped to nothing more than a terrible whisper.

"So get in my shadow," he muttered, "or take out your gun and shoot me. Pick one. Because I am finished with this conversation."

The next movement she made was swifter than a storm. Her free hand fled to her back and returned with agility with a sleek handgun, a handgun whose presence he normally greeted with fondness and pride, and he glanced down at the weapon and up at her face and saw a ferocity in it, filling every line and crease with absolute and complete resentment, and the rage inside him was briefly replaced with shock.

His eyes widened and his lips parted in surprise, and for a moment, his heart dropped to his feet. _She's going to do it..._

The gun came barreling towards him with speed he couldn't register and the butt end of it cracked into his right temple with an incredible amount of strength, striking him so bluntly he for a moment doubted it had come from her. He automatically released his hold on her wrist and staggered backwards, clutching his head, feeling the pain radiate through his skull and down his spine. There was a slick warmth beneath his palm.

" _Do not...grab me,"_ she repeated, her voice now shaking openly. " _And lose the part of you that is so naive I find you no more wise than a child."_

Stunned, he unsteadily rose his head to stare at her. With the pulsing of his skull and the sheer curtain over his heart, his throat turned vile.

"How could you know how wise a child is supposed to be, Hawkeye?" he said quietly, matching the shake in her voice. "You never were one yourself." His hand felt glued to his temple, still lit in throbs. With his arm raised now, he felt the tremors in his muscles. He did not think they stemmed from the pain. "Don't kid yourself into thinking you're any more clever than me."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

" _You think I'm a fool, Lieutenant, but you're one too,"_ he hissed. "You think you know what's good for me? You don't even know what's good for yourself! You-!" He somehow possessed the ability to stop his tongue. He forgo what he almost said, closing his mouth briefly before opening it again to move on. "You're self destructive and you are absolutely insane sometimes! Why do you think we got along so well? Because I am too! And I fucking know that, and I fucking recognize it! It's time you step down from your pedestal and do the same!"

"I appreciate the try, _sir_ , but I'm the most level headed person on your side, and for good reason considering how _vapidly_ you operate, so do us both a favor and refrain from letting your anger speak before your faulty logic!"

" _Faulty-?!"_ he laughed humorlessly. The flesh that made up his body suddenly belonged to someone else, and the matter unique to his brain was suddenly turned to dust. He tasted the viciousness before the words left his tongue.

"Next time you find yourself in a bathroom," he couldn't stop himself, "take off your clothes, put a mirror to your back and tell me, _tell me!"_ The words he'd managed to halt before came barreling out of him like thunder. " _That you're not as vapid as me!"_

She faltered. The look of thick anger dropped from her face. A heaviness burrowed in the center of his stomach.

They hadn't made a sound about what lay beneath her work shirt uniform in years.

He wanted her to shoot him then, in the leg or in the arm or in the head, anywhere.

"I thought we made a good team," she finally said quietly after some time, not even acknowledging his words, "because you wanted to achieve truth and goodness, and I did too. I thought perhaps we were compatible. Was I so wrong?"

The weight inside him felt like the entire strength of gravity was against him, and his legs felt hardly capable of keeping him standing. The man conversing with her did not seem to be Roy Mustang. But still he spoke using that man's voice.

"I think you've already answered your own question."

The gun was still at her side, shining with water. Her brown eyes were so dark he couldn't see their color anymore.

"I have answered my own question," she whispered. "I did a long time ago. You just haven't answered it yourself."

"You don't know me like you think you do," he replied cruelly. A drop of blood rolled down his face as his palm retreated from his head. He felt his face twitch as he fought to control himself. Something burned behind his eyes. "But I know you." The trail the blood left was hot, and it left him frozen. A breath shivered up through his chest. "And I beam at that."

She scoffed quietly and shook her head. Any remaining emotion in her face dissipated completely and she was left to look at him with something more empty, more hollow. It ripped him apart.

"What a foul thing to be proud of."

They stared at each other then, saying nothing and listening to the sounds of the increasing rain. He wondered if she could hear how irregular his lungs were behaving. Everything he'd said was false, and the most obtuse thing was that he knew it.

Nobody knew him, not even himself, save for her. The rain ran down his back.

"So shoot me," he whispered bitterly. The hand holding the gun hesitated, then it was lifted and brought to rest back in the holster beneath the back of her jacket. He frowned at the sound of it being put away.

"You're not going off the deep end with this one, sir," she explained dully. "Like I said before; it's a morally grey area. You're just...losing your sight. And it's hurtful to watch happen."

"I'm not the only broken one. Don't forget how shallow you've proven to see, too." He didn't know why he kept going, why he couldn't stop. Was he so weak?

"I won't."

Her response was quick, and he hadn't expected her to agree with him so readily. For a moment, it made him think of how open she was with herself, how honest she was, and perhaps he wasn't doing the same. It made him think he was being irrational.

Then he thought of how this man was likely going to kill again soon, and he thought about he'd reach a rank that would take him an additional five years otherwise, and he thought about how she seemed to stop arguing with him. His mouth remained closed as he gave her one last stare before experimentally turning on his foot and to take a few steps forward. When he failed to hear a refute or following footsteps, he continued his walk, forcing down a deep breath and lifting his chin in an attempt to suffocate the rising feelings of doubt, and the burning feelings of guilt.

"I could never forget."

He would have told himself 'no', if able. He would have demanded he continued abandoning that scene, to continue forward and to remain committed to his plan. But his feet stopped for him without his choice, forcing him to a dead halt. A few loose pebbles crunched beneath his shoes.

"I could never forget not only how shallow I saw, back then," she continued in a subdued way when he froze, speaking to his back. "But how blind I was."

His breath came to him quicker then, and his shoulders tensed as he felt his prior convictions dwindle.

" _I'll be given a medal and an extra star for bringing him to justice."_ His voice barely held the hint of a quiver. He was suddenly unsure of who he was convincing.

"To death, you mean."

" _Sometimes it's the same fucking thing."_

It made him almost nauseous, that he couldn't win both the mission and her support.

It was handed to him so easily, this promise of a rank, a rank he'd dreamt of reaching for years, and she, she the person _he planned this with_ , was trying to hold him back from it.

The thought only continued to feed the turmoil inside.

"Then you and I should have been dead a long time ago, if that's what you think, Colonel."

His head jerked half an inch backwards as though he'd been slapped. He felt his twisted features falter. Astonished, he blinked several times into the rain, and he found himself slowly turning around to face her.

"Is this what we're doing?" he asked painfully, still fighting to keep his voice steady. He saw her jaw clench and her throat move with a swallow. She stood there, arms at her side, face flat, hair wet, chest rising and falling. She did not answer.

"Are we going backwards, Lieutenant? Are we bringing... _that_ into this? Are we bringing _that_ up now?"

"'Lieutenant,'" she quoted with a bite, "'when I take down the government, the first thing we must do is answer for what we did in Ishval. We'll be tried as war criminals, and sentenced as such.'" She took in a quiet, shaky breath. '"Will you still follow me, even through that?'"

It was his turn to face silence. His eyes stung harshly. Bound, he could not find the will to move or speak.

"And I said _yes_ ," she emphasized the word, "because knowing I would one day face justice is what lets me sleep at night."

The burning in his belly filled his limbs. The unbalance felt like it would rip him apart.

"And Colonel," she cocked her head down, "I guarantee I've killed far, far more than Hudson has. So if you really believe what you just said,"

The boil flipped to nausea, his stomach pancaked, and he felt his heart stop,

"Then kill me."

His fingernails bit into his palms and every muscle in his body turned rigid. The thought of it, even the mere sound of the words being spoken, demolished him more than their worst shouts of anger. A breach of consciousness allowed the flash of an image to cross his mind, an image he may one day face, and it was her, handcuffed and bound and on her knees, with a rifle to her head, and he exhaled forcefully with a grunt to banish the thought from him.

The rigidity of his muscles suddenly disappeared, his ribs racked with the release of all of his wrath, and a crash of coherency stuck his head down to his boots. Something inside sagged terribly and his shoulders lost all tension as his head fell back and his eyes closed towards the sky.

The rain coated his face. He felt his head moving, shaking, just barely so.

He stayed like that for several moments, breathing. It seemed like an eternity before he found the ability to move, and he wondered if she was as cemented as he.

"You really must think me a fool," he finally murmured after some time. With his eyes still closed, he felt the rain more profoundly and heard her voice more deeply.

"Yes," she said quietly, so the word was barely heard to him in the weathered breeze.

He dropped his head back to its rightful place. The intensity of his anger was replaced with the most severe kind of remorse.

"So where do we go now, then, Lieutenant?" he asked the empty space before him.

"If you do this," she answered half heartedly, "we go backwards."

He laughed quietly, giving his head a shake. He blinked and watched the rain come down from the dark clouds to hit the ground. He shrugged, the ghost of a grieved smile crossing his face.

"I already have," he said blankly. He felt her eyes on his back, but he was grateful to be looking into the empty alley. He saw the streetlamp on the other end flicker lamely.

"...Sir?"

"I've already gone backwards," he said again with a small, depriving shrug.

"Colonel, you haven't killed him yet…"

"I'm not talking about him anymore."

At her silence, he forced himself to turn and look at her. He couldn't allow himself to be a coward forever.

With his partition of anger gone, he felt as though he was seeing clear for the first time that night. He was able to feel the chill of the rain, and he saw the state he'd put her in. Her hair was now completely unkempt and falling out of its black clip, soaked entirely and dripping. Her jacket was mildly crooked from the grabbing and sheathing of her gun,

and from the grabbing of her wrist.

He closed his eyes again, and was saturated with something he knew he should have felt far before then: regret.

"What I said to you…" he began as he opened his eyes, half lidded and watching a puddle grow. "I really am a fool."

"Yeah," she agreed, exhausted. "You can be. But I know…" she grappled with herself, "that I have made mistakes, Colonel. My tattoo, and what's become of it...it is, of course, my fault…"

"No, wait -"

She put up a hand, and he immediately silenced.

"You saying it out loud doesn't make that any different," she continued. "So don't feel as though you planted that idea in my head. I've always known it."

"But I didn't mean -"

The hand came up again.

"What's happened to us, has happened. What we've done, is done. But we still have the choice to decide what we do. And...you made a choice tonight, just now, not to kill Jao Hudson. That's what we still have control over. That's what we need to continue focusing on. You haven't gone backwards in my eyes, sir...despite how we ended up here," she inhaled again as though remembering their yells, "we're still moving forward."

He sighed heavily and immediately began walking towards her. She seemed to tense, surprised at his sudden movement, but her eyes only followed him as he came to stop in front of her once more. He felt his hand twitch at the want to make contact with her, but he forced it into a tight fist.

"Dammit, Hawkeye, why can't you hate me for once?"

She watched him warily. The rain, beginning to come down harder, seemed to pay her no mind.

"I just simply can't, sir."

"What I...I didn't mean, what I said...I'm-" The words didn't seem to be enough. They were not enough. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant."

"Like I said," she answered softly. "We can do nothing more than look to the future, and not the past."

"Please don't do that…"

"Do what?"

"Try and protect me all the time. You want to bear everything I say to you, and everything I do. You want to hold onto it so I'm free of it, so I can spit on you so long as I end up focused again. Don't...I can't be allowed to do that. I don't want to do that…"

"Colonel," she smiled slightly. "Your head is bleeding, quite a lot, in fact. I wouldn't say you're getting away with it."

He looked at her for a moment before lifting a few fingers to gingerly touch his temple. He'd forgotten entirely about that, and he was glad to be reminded of the pain in his head.

"Regardless…" he said distractedly as his hand slowly came back to his side. "Do not forget what I said tonight. Do not see me as someone better than I am. I don't deserve that, and neither do you."

She glanced down at his feet.

"I'll hold you to it, then," she said before meeting his eyeline. "You are the man that you are because you learn from your mistakes. So don't make this one again."

The corners of his mouth lifted. The rain mixed with the blood on the side of his face so it dripped over his eyebrow.

Slowly, enough to allow her to step away if she wanted to, he closed the distance between them and he pulled her into his arms. She didn't move away, but he felt her muscles tenses briefly before she accepted the embrace and she wrapped her arms around him too. He tightened his grip and felt her body against his.

"Please forgive me, Hawkeye," he said into her slick hair. Her fingers pressed into his back.

"I have."

When they pulled away, his hand slid down the length of her retreating arm and rested beneath the wrist he'd caught earlier. He couldn't find the words to express the regret of touching her like that, of handling her in such a way, and she answered him just as silently by gently feathering her fingers over the sleeve of his jacket and pulling her arm away, as though it was meant to be forgotten.

A lapse of judgement came over him, or perhaps it was better described as a feeding of his wants, and he brought his hand up to gently brush his thumb over her cheek. At the moment his skin touched hers, he imagined she would have jumped backwards or lowered his arm with her own, but she didn't. For the briefest moment, with their eyes locked, he'd forgotten about the maelstrom they'd just shared.

His hand dropped, and she made the slightest motion with her head, gesturing behind her. He reciprocated the nod and took the first step forward, and she turned to follow beside him.

He was overcome with a wave of fatigue. Tired and downtrodden, wet and useless, he glanced over to the soldier walking silently beside him. Her eyes were downcast on the dreary stone, probably lost in thought.

After touching her, even as shortly and barely of his thumb on her cheek, being one of the most intimate gestures ever made between them, he suddenly wanted more. Overcome then with the shocking desire to just hold her, and push her wet bangs out from her face, he had to remind himself of who they both were.

She was his adjutant, and the most respectable, brave, astounding person he'd known.

He was her superior, and he had said to her the most despicable things he could have conjured.

For more reasons than one, he could not touch her, not matter how strongly the desire had made itself.


End file.
